saw and knew his father, Fyodor Pavlovitch, for the first time on coming of age, when he visited our
neighbourhood on purpose to settle with him about his property. He seems not to have liked his father.
He did not stay long with him, and made haste to get away, having only succeeded in obtaining a sum
of money, and entering into an agreement for future payments from the estate, of the revenues and
value of which he was unable (a fact worthy of note) upon this occasion, to get a statement from his
father. Fyodor Pavlovitch remarked for the first time then (this, too, should be noted) that Mitya had
a vague and exaggerated idea of his property. Fyodor Pavlovitch was very well satisfied with this, as
it fell in with his own designs. He gathered only that the young man was frivolous, unruly, of violent
passions, impatient, and dissipated, and that if he could only obtain ready money he would be satisfied,
although only, of course, for a short time. So Fyodor Pavlovitch began to take advantage of this fact,
sending him from time to time small doles, instalments. In the end, when four years later, Mitya, losing
patience, came a second time to our little town to settle up once for all with his father, it turned out to
his amazement that he had nothing, that it was difficult to get an account even, that he had received the
whole value of his property in sums of money from Fyodor Pavlovitch, and was perhaps even in debt to
him, that by various agreements into which he had, of his own desire, entered at various previous dates,
he had no right to expect anything more, and so on, and so on. The young man was overwhelmed,
suspected deceit and cheating, and was almost beside himself. And, indeed, this circumstance led to
the catastrophe, the account of which forms the subject of my first introductory story, or rather the external
side of it. But before I pass to that story I must say a little of Fyodor Pavlovitchs other two sons, and of
their origin.